A World Famous 85-Year-Old Jewel Thief Was Arrested After Trying Steal Earrings In Atlanta

The Atlanta Police Department announced on Tuesday that a woman was arrested for attempting to steal a pair of earrings. This, by itself, is not necessarily big news. People get arrested for trying to steal jewelry every day. What makes this news, however, are these two additional pieces of information:

Previous media reports, and the Atlanta Police, call Payne a career criminal whose modus operandi was to trick unsuspecting clerks in jewelry stores into showing her various diamond rings and, in the process, confuse them to the point that they forgot how many items they’d taken out to show. Payne would then take an item.

One report alleges she tried to, at 83 years old, steal a $40,000 ring in California.

Now, if you are anything like me, you’ve read everything up to this point and immediately started thinking, “This… this must become a movie. Someone must make a movie about the now 85-year-old woman who dedicated her entire life to stealing diamonds from jewelry stores all over the world. I do not care who makes this movie. Someone, anyone, just make it.”

Well, I have excellent news for both of us. Doris Payne’s criminal career is so famous that there was a documentary made about her and Halle Berry was attached to star in a major motion picture about her life a few years back. There hasn’t been much word on that movie recently, but hopefully this will get it back into the front of Hollywood’s mind. There aren’t enough movies about octogenarian jewel thieves. I’ve always said this.